This is the crossword puzzle thread

I did good on Week 4, but felt like I was totally guessing on a few crosses. rn I'm 4th overall in the Choppy rankings...this is before a bunch of the solvers have even finished, so I'm sure I'll get knocked down a few spots, but I think this is still as good as my competitive solving career is ever gonna get

did thursday's late last night and couldn't parse the mechanism at all, but it's a good one

Interesting grid today, though I'm of two minds on the fill.

Awful SW corner today, I had to brute force my way through it.

Like VU ref today

And Bad Company reference.

Really enjoyed this Friday puzzle by Simon Marotte.

Fri and Sat puzzles were good but they were both too easy. I spent no more than 20 minutes on the two of them combined (and I wasn't even speed-solving). I need more resistance, this is getting ridiculous. I habitually set aside 30 minutes to do the Friday puzzle and 30 more for the Saturday puzzle but I feel like I'm getting ganked.

Maybe, but wasn’t Thursday a little more dit than usual?

Difficult

I don’t do the Thursday ones. Maybe I should start.

i thought Thursday's was medium-ish, tough going at first but fairly easy once you figured out what the trick was.

the Thursday reminded me of why I fckn hate the Thursday ones.

I think on Thursday I got 15 across, and then combined that with the fact that 10/11/12 "down" were such standard NYT filler, which clued me in quickly.

breezed thru fri and sat too. today’s was a bit of a slog tbh.

Today’s was painful yes

yeah Sunday was horrible, after that weirdly easy Saturday

...and then today felt difficult for a Monday - I finished it of course, but it had some kinda thorny cluing.

Yeah, Naticky around 21A, and it took me about a minute and a half longer to solve than the last several Mondays.

I also found today’s a slog for a Monday, although I at first thought it was because I am out of practice.

remarkably easy wednesday

Just did the Tuesday a few minutes ago so will have a look-see now. Maybe my LL reminder will also serve as an Xword reminder.

You are correct, sir, felt like a super-easy Monday level puzzle.

thursday’s 28D is straight-up wrong iirc

That’s really weird.

thursday’s 28D is straight-up wrong iirc

Wikipedia doesn't contradict 28D though -- what am I missing?

TS: ACT vs. NSW

Ohhh, the clue was correct on the web version, which left me very confused.

changing it without noting the correction? where is the journalistic integrity

Saturday’s puzzle fun but pretty easy?

41D and 42A ludicrously weird I thought. And a few difficult refs for a foreigner.

Another too-easy Fri/Sat but yeah, Sat had some weird entries.

I've definitely seen both of those before in there.

How about this Thursday’s puzzle?

not a fan

Trying to decide whether it was clever or ugly. Jolie laide maybe.

On a Thursday you expect there to be a gimmick. This had three different gimmicks. The one with circled letters forming an appropriate word? Very nice, very layered. A good three-tier visual joke.

The one where a letter gets skipped in a humorously appropriate way? Very good. I generally like that kind of play on Thursday.

The third gimmick - with the shaded letters - was comprehensible in retrospect. I'll allow it (in the spirit of expanding the playfulness possibilities of crosswords), but it was not as elegant as the other two gimmicks.

Overall, refreshing. If you want hard themeless puzzles with no rebus trickery or whatever, go to Friday/Saturday or seek out the Fireball equivalents. If you start a Thursday NYT you should just accept that there's probably gonna be some hyjinx.

I actually didn't understand the circled letters at all? I understand the shape, but not why that word is within them.

Hooked hand. FLUSH is a poker hand

Thank you!

First Sunday I’ve actually enjoyed in a while.

it’s just . . . recipe ingredients? wtaf

Yes just the ingredients alone would be a boring theme, but the revealer is a resplendent word, difficult for Americans to spell, and not a common crossword answer. I'll allow it. Difficulty-wise, it just scrapes into Thursday territory.

KAC with a tough but fair one today.

Yeah. 16A, 17A, 58A were completely new to me. Finished in decent, but it took work.

I got 1A quickly but don't think I've seen it in a puzzle before.

3D, 10D, 30D, 52D were a bit of a stretch though. Leee's "tough but fair" is accurate.

Generally fine for me but I am heartily sick of slangy-nickname-for clues, the southeast had some near unsolvable crosses I had to guess/triangulate.

3D and 52D were good imo (any method of avoiding elliott ness-type references is okay with me) but no doubt provincial

17A was weird but i guess i learned something? 60A should have been clued 'nickname of mookieproof's high school sports teams'

xxxxp if thursday were international v_________ day or something that would be *slightly* different but . . . while i generally dislike thursday gimmickry, i can respect certain ideas or attempts -- i mean, i didn't love *last* thursday's throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks puzzle, but hey, it tried. nothing about yesterday's earned it a thursday slot imo

How do you feel about "here's a short anecdote in six long answers" efforts?

I liked 10D, absolutely as valid as another baseball question.

Today's OTOH... I really didn't like the SW.